right to these feelings; but I think it was a total mistake to ascribe them to me. I never evaded the morning salute, which Paulina would slip when she could; nor was a certain little manner of still disdain a weapon known in my armory of defense; whereas, Paulina always kept it clear, fine and bright, and any rough German sally called forth at once its steely glisten.
Honest Anna Braun, in some measure, felt this difference; and while she half-feared, half-worshipped Paulina, as a sort of dainty nymph—an Undine—she took refuge with me, as a being all mortal, and of easier mood.
A book we liked well to read and translate was Schiller's Ballads; Paulina soon learned to read them beautifully: the Fräulein would listen to her with a broad smile of pleasure, and say her voice sounded like music. She translated them too with a facile flow of language, and in a strain of kindred and poetic fervor: her cheek would flush, her lips tremblingly smile, her beauteous eyes kindle or melt as she went on. She learnt the best by heart, and would often recite them when we were alone together. One she liked well was "Des Mädchens Klage": that is, she liked well to repeat the words, she found plaintive melody in the sound; the sense she would criticize. She murmured, as we sat over the fire one evening:—
"Du Heilige, rufe dein kind zurück
Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,
Ich habe gelebt und geliebet!"
"Lived and loved!" said she, "is that the summit of earthly happiness, the end of life—to love? I don't think it is. It may be the extreme of mortal misery, it may be sheer waste of time, and fruitless torture of feeling. If Schiller had said to be loved, he might have come nearer the truth. Is not that another thing, Lucy, to be loved?"
"I suppose it may be: but why consider the subject? What is love to you? What do you know about it?"
She crimsoned, half in irritation, half in shame.
"Now, Lucy," she said, "I won't take that from you. It may be well for papa to look on me as a baby: I rather prefer that he should thus view me; but you know and shall learn to acknowledge that I am verging on my nineteenth year".
